Yachting: Wild Oats XI wins Sydney to Hobart race in record time

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HOBART, Australia: Supermaxi Wild Oats XI smashed its own record time by nearly 17 minutes in Australia's Sydney to Hobart ocean yacht race, taking line honours on Friday ahead of Ragamuffin-Loyal.

Thousands of onlookers cheered at Hobart's Constitution Dock as the favourite came home in one day, 18 hours, 23 minutes and 12 seconds for its sixth victory over the prestigious 628 nautical mile bluewater classic.

Wild Oats XI also won every year from 2005 to 2008 and in 2010.

"It was close, we only just made it but it's a great result for the whole team," skipper Mark Richards said after crossing the finish line.

"This boat is a great machine and we're very proud of it. Getting the record is a big thing and it's very satisfying."

Ragamuffin-Loyal, which beat Wild Oats by just three minutes last year and is skippered by 85-year-old Syd Fischer, finished four-and-a-half hours later with gear damage hampering a bid for back-to-back wins.

"A lot of things just went wrong," said Fischer. "But it's a good boat, well built, strong and it goes fast. We'll make modifications for next year."

Lahana was running third in a tight battle with Black Jack, ahead of Loki in fifth. Jazz leads the handicap standings, which takes into account the dimensions of each boat in the fleet, ahead of Calm and Secret Men's Business.

The previous record was one day, 18 hours, 40 minutes and 10 seconds, set in 2005, and Richards had his 100-foot yacht well ahead of that pace late Thursday as they powered down Tasmania's east coast.

But a northeasterly tailwind gave way to a weaker westerly that dramatically slowed progress.

Wild Oats' crew had all but given up on breaking the record after rounding Tasman Island in the middle of the night and it was touch and go as they sailed up Hobart's Derwent River.

But the unfurling of a bigger headsail ultimately made the difference to tack home surrounded by a flotilla of smaller vessels.

"It was a very tricky night, the breeze died on us. It was very testing and we had to make a lot of sail changes, but it's all part of the Sydney-Hobart," said Richards.

"The crew have been together a long time and when the going gets tough they just get tougher."

Wild Oats XI led the 76-vessel fleet from the starting gun in Sydney Harbour on Wednesday in a famously unforgiving race that takes crews across the notorious Bass Strait.

As well as dealing with the tough conditions, the boat hit an unknown object that damaged a daggerboard beneath the hull.

Catastrophic conditions claimed six lives and sank five yachts in 1998, and vessels are routinely unable to complete the race.

However, there have so far only been two retirements this year - Living Doll and Primitive Cool.

The 2013 event was marred by the controversial expulsion of supermaxi Wild Thing, the 2003 line honours winner, which was among the top three favourites.

Officials banned it just hours before the start, citing incomplete documentation of major modifications that extended the vessel to 100 feet. Skipper Grant Wharington continued to protest Friday.

He claimed the man who banned his yacht, race director Tim Cox, did not know enough about boat-building and had "egg on his face".

Cox rejected the criticism and told Wharington to "lay off the personal insults", according to Sydney's Daily Telegraph.

- AFP/de



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Autonomy founder fires back at HP after news of DOJ inquiry

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Autonomy founder Mike Lynch



(Credit:
HP)


Autonomy founder and former CEO Mike Lynch is firing back at Hewlett-Packard after the release of HP's annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today. The report states that the federal government opened an inquiry into HP's acquisition of Autonomy in November and hints that Autonomy's accounting is partially to blame.

"It is extremely disappointing that HP has again failed to provide a detailed calculation of its $5 billion write-down of Autonomy, or publish any explanation of the serious allegations it has made against the former management team, in its annual report filing today," Lynch said in an e-mailed statement. "Furthermore, it is now less clear how much of the $5 billion write-down is in fact being attributed to the alleged accounting issues, and how much to other changes in business performance and earnings projections."

HP acquired the enterprise software company in August 2011 for $11.1 billion, or 11 times its annual earnings. Since the purchase, controversy, lawsuits, and an $8.8 billion charge against HP's earnings have ensued.

HP and Lynch have traded arguments in the press over who deserves the blame for Autonomy's subpar performance. In its fourth-quarter earnings release last month, HP said it had discovered "extensive evidence" of fraudulent accounting and failed disclosures on Autonomy's part leading up to the sale. Consequently, Lynch set up a Web site that denies HP's charges and says HP mishandled the company after acquiring it.

"We also do not understand why HP is raising these issues now given that Autonomy reported into the HP Finance team from the day the acquisition completed in October 2011, there was an extensive due diligence process and Autonomy was audited as a public company for many years," Lynch said today. "We also note the statement in HP's annual report that it received confirmation from the U.S. Department of Justice on 21 November 2012 (the day after HP's first public statement), that the Department had opened an investigation. We can confirm that we have as yet had no contact from any regulatory authority. We will co-operate with any investigation and look forward to the opportunity to explain our position."


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How to Live to a Ripe Old Age

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Cento di questi giorni. May you have a hundred birthdays, the Italians say, and some of them do.

So do other people in various spots around the world—in Blue Zones, so named by National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner for the blue ink that outlines these special areas on maps developed over more than a decade. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)

In his second edition of his book The Blue Zones, Buettner writes about a newly identified Blue Zone: the Greek island of Ikaria (map). National Geographic magazine Editor at Large Cathy Newman interviewed him about the art of living long and well. (Watch Buettner talk about how to live to a hundred.)

Q. You've written about Blue Zones in Sardinia, Italy; Loma Linda, California; Nicoa, Costa Rica and Okinawa, Japan. How did you find your way to Ikaria?

A. Michel Poulain, a demographer on the project, and I are always on the lookout for new Blue Zones. This one popped up in 2008. We got a lead from a Greek foundation looking for biological markers in aging people. The census data showed clusters of villages there with a striking proportion of people 85 or older. (Also see blog: "Secrets of the Happiest Places on Earth.")

In the course of your quest you've been introduced to remarkable individuals like 100-year-old Marge Jetton of Loma Linda, California, who starts the day with a mile-long [0.6-kilometer] walk, 6 to 8 miles [10 to 13 kilometers] on a stationary bike, and weight lifting. Who is the most memorable Blue Zoner you've met?

Without question it's Stamatis Moraitis, who lives in Ikaria. I believe he's 102. He's famous for partying. He makes 400 liters [100 gallons] of wine from his vineyards each year, which he drinks with his friends. His house is the social hot spot of the island. (See "Longevity Genes Found; Predict Chances of Reaching 100.")

He's also the Ikarian who emigrated to the United States, was diagnosed with lung cancer in his 60s, given less then a year to live, and who returned to Ikaria to die. Instead, he recovered.

Yes, he never went through chemotherapy or treatment. He just moved back to Ikaria.

Did anyone figure out how he survived?

Nope. He told me he returned to the U.S. ten years after he left to see if the American doctors could explain it. I asked him what happened. "My doctors were all dead," he said.

One of the common factors that seem to link all Blue Zone people you've spoken with is a life of hard work—and sometimes hardship. Your thoughts?

I think we live in a culture that relentlessly pursues comfort. Ease is related to disease. We shouldn't always be fleeing hardship. Hardship also brings people together. We should welcome it.

Sounds like another version of the fable of the grasshopper and the ant?

You rarely get satisfaction sitting in an easy chair. If you work in a garden on the other hand, and it yields beautiful tomatoes, that's a good feeling.

Can you talk about diet? Not all of us have access to goat milk, for example, which you say is typically part of an Ikarian breakfast.

There is nothing exotic about their diet, which is a version of a Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes vegetables, beans, fruit, olive oil, and moderate amounts of alcohol. (Read more about Buettner's work in Ikaria in National Geographic Adventure.)

All things in moderation?

Not all things. Socializing is something we should not do in moderation. The happiest Americans socialize six hours a day.

The people you hang out with help you hang on to life?

Yes, you have to pay attention to your friends. Health habits are contagious. Hanging out with unhappy people who drink and smoke is hazardous to your health.

So how has what you've learned influenced your own lifestyle?

One of the big things I've learned is that there's an advantage to regular low-intensity activity. My previous life was setting records on my bike. [Buettner holds three world records in distance cycling.] Now I use my bike to commute. I only eat meat once a week, and I always keep nuts in my office: Those who eat nuts live two to three more years than those who don't.

You also write about having a purpose in life.

Purpose is huge. I know exactly what my values are and what I love to do. That's worth additional years right there. I say no to a lot of stuff that would be easy money but deviates from my meaning of life.

The Japanese you met in Okinawa have a word for that?

Yes. Ikigai: "The reason for which I wake in the morning."

Do you have a non-longevity-enhancing guilty pleasure?

Tequila is my weakness.

And how long would you like to live?

I'd like to live to be 200.


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White House Says It Has No New Fiscal Cliff Plan

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The White House said today it has no plans to offer new proposals to avoid the fiscal cliff which looms over the country's economy just five days from now, but will meet Friday with Congressional leaders in a last ditch effort to forge a deal.


Republicans and Democrats made no conciliatory gestures in public today, despite the urgency.


The White House said President Obama would meet Friday with Democratic and Republican leaders. But a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said the Republican "will continue to stress that the House has already passed legislation to avert the entire fiscal cliff and now the Senate must act."


The White House announced the meeting after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the budget situation "a mess" and urged the president to present a fresh proposal.


"I told the president I would be happy to look at whatever he proposes, but the truth is we're coming up against a hard deadline here, and as I said, this is a conversation we should have had months ago," McConnell said of his phone call with Obama Wednesday night.


McConnell added, "Republicans aren't about to write a blank check for anything Senate Democrats put forward just because we find ourselves at the edge of the cliff."


"That having been said, we'll see what the president has to propose," the Republican Senate leader said.


But a senior White House official told ABC News, "There is no White House bill."


That statement, however, may have wiggle room. Earlier today White House spokesman Jay Carney said, "I don't have any meetings to announce," but a short time later, Friday's meeting was made public.


It's unclear if the two sides are playing a game of political chicken or whether the administration is braced for the fiscal cliff.


Earlier today, fiscal cliff, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lashed out at Republicans in a scathing speech that targeted House Republicans and particularly Boehner.






Charles Dharapak/AP Photo













Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf to Saddam Hussein: 'Get Outta Town' Watch Video









Gen. Schwarzkopf's '5 Minutes of Unimportant Questions' Watch Video





Reid, D-Nev., spoke on the floor of the Senate as the president returned to Washington early from an Hawaiian vacation in what appears to be a dwindling hope for a deal.


The House of Representatives will meet for legislative business Sunday evening, leaving the door cracked open ever so slightly to the possibility of a last-minute agreement.


But on a conference call with Republican House members Thursday afternoon, Boehner kept to the Republican hard line that if the Senate wants a deal it should amend bills already passed by the House.


That was the exact opposite of what Reid said in the morning, that Republicans should accept a bill passed by Democratic led Senate.


Related: What the average American should know about capital gains and the fiscal cliff.


"We are here in Washington working while the members of the House of Representatives are out watching movies and watching their kids play soccer and basketball and doing all kinds of things. They should be here," Reid said. "I can't imagine their consciences."


House Republicans have balked at a White House deal to raise taxes on couples earning more than $250,000 and even rejected Boehner's proposal that would limit the tax increases to people earning more than $1 million.


"It's obvious what's going on," Reid said while referring to Boehner. "He's waiting until Jan. 3 to get reelected to speaker because he has so many people over there that won't follow what he wants. John Boehner seems to care more about keeping his speakership than keeping the nation on a firm financial footing."


Related: Starbucks enters fiscal cliff fray.


Reid said the House is "being operated with a dictatorship of the speaker" and suggested today that the Republicans should agree to accept the original Senate bill pass in July. Reid's comments, however, made it clear he did not expect that to happen.


"It looks like" the nation will go over the fiscal cliff in just five days, he declared.


"It's not too late for the speaker to take up the Senate-passed bill, but that time is even winding down," Reid said. "So I say to the speaker, take the escape hatch that we've left you. Put the economic fate of the nation ahead of your own fate as Speaker of the House."


Boehner's spokesman Michael Steel reacted to Reid's tirade in an email, writing, "Senator Reid should talk less and legislate more. The House has already passed legislation to avoid the entire fiscal cliff. Senate Democrats have not."


Boehner has said it is now up to the Senate to come up with a deal.


Obama, who landed in Washington late this morning, made a round of calls over the last 24 hours to Reid, Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.


Related: Obama pushes fiscal cliff resolution.






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Three gods: The hardest logic puzzle ever

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Tokyo's Nikkei 225 hits 21-month high

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TOKYO: Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei 225 index on Thursday closed at its highest level since the quake-tsunami disaster in March last year, a day after Japan's new conservative government took power.

The Nikkei added 0.91 percent, or 92.62 points, to 10,322.98 by the close, finishing above 10,254.43, its level on March 11, 2011 when a massive temblor hit Japan, sparking a tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis.

The broader Topix index of all first-section shares was up 0.75 percent, or 6.38 points, at 854.09.

"Some say the market is now overbought, but the trend is your friend, and few are willing to risk going short at the moment," said an equity trading director at a foreign brokerage.

"Japan is now right in the middle of the radar for foreign portfolio managers."

In forex trade, the US dollar rose to its highest level in more than two years against the yen as Shinzo Abe was sworn in as prime minister.

Abe -- whose Liberal Democratic Party won a landslide election victory this month -- has repeatedly said he would pressure the Bank of Japan for more easing measures, comments that have helped bring down the value of the yen.

- AFP/al



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Pressure on Apple is improving labor practices, says Times

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Workers assemble and perform quality control checks on MacBook Pro display enclosures at an Apple supplier facility in Shanghai.



(Credit:
Apple)


The attention brought to bear on the labor practices of Apple's manufacturers and suppliers in China may be starting to create real, positive change in the electronics industry, says an article published this evening in The New York Times.


The Times, along with other media outlets, published several high-profile reports this year on the practices of Apple suppliers -- including contract manufacturer Foxconn, which produces Apple's iPhone and
iPad, as well as products for other companies. The reports also included looks at Apple's lack of manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and its tax strategies.



Such media attention -- and the entry of the issue into mainstream consciousness, by way of skits on "Saturday Night Live" and questions during the presidential debates -- has, the Times reports, compelled executives in the electronics industry to realize they need to turn things around.


"The days of easy globalization are done," the paper quotes an unidentified Apple executive as saying. "We know that we have to get into the muck now."


Some of the positive steps the Times mentions are decreased hours and increased wages at Foxconn; a tripling of Apple's corporate social responsibility staff; increased transparency from Apple on practices and progress; and a new willingness on the part of Apple to reach out to worker-advocacy groups. Apple has also, the Times reports, stopped treating these labor issues "like engineering puzzles," and has adopted a "messier, more human approach" -- one with an increased focus on listening to workers and labor groups as opposed to simply establishing more policies.


The negative attention on industry giants Apple and Foxconn, as well as the positive changes it has begun to foster, are affecting the industry at large, the Times reports, with companies like HP and Intel, as well as Foxconn's competitors, getting swept up in the jetstream.


Intel's director of corporate responsibility, Gary Niekerk, tells the news outlet, "This is on the front burner for everyone now." No one inside Intel "wants to end up in a factory that treats people badly, that ends up on the front page."


Still, Apple has much work to do, the Times says. For one thing, the company's famous secrecy -- and that of Silicon Valley as a whole -- extends, wrongheadedly, to the sharing of information that could help improve labor conditions. And Apple has yet to truly don the mantle of industry leader in regard to concern for workers. As the Times puts it:




...Apple has not sought the high-profile leadership opportunities that have set off transformations in other industries. Nike, for instance, has convened public meetings of labor, human rights, environmental, and business leaders to discuss how to improve overseas factories. The clothing retailer Gap Inc. has invited outside organizations to critique its purchasing practices and publish their findings. Patagonia shares its factory audits with competitors and has been a vocal supporter of a centralized audit report clearinghouse that lets companies share information.


"That's the standard Apple has to meet," said a former Apple executive. "That's how a leader transforms an industry."



And the problem, too, is complex, and one that's not likely to be solved overnight, the Times reports. Some workers, for instance, were upset when Foxconn curtailed working hours. And there's a struggle between companies like Apple and their suppliers, like Foxconn, over which side should pay for improvements at manufacturing facilities.


Still, the Times concludes, though it may be slow-going, both Foxconn and Apple believe changes are "falling into place."


You can read the Times article in its entirety here. The paper has also published an extended statement from Apple on factory conditions in China, which says, among other things, "Apple is in a unique position to lead and we have embraced this role since the earliest days of our supplier responsibility program." You can read the entire statement here.

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Space Pictures This Week: Green Lantern, Supersonic Star

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Okla. Senator Could Prevent Gun Control Changes

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If there's one person most likely to keep new gun-control measures from passing Congress swiftly, it's Sen. Tom Coburn.


Conservatives revere the Oklahoma Republican for his fiscal hawkishness and regular reports on government waste. But he's also a staunch gun-rights advocate, and he's shown a willingness to obstruct even popular legislation, something in the Senate that a single member can easily accomplish.


That mixture could make Coburn the biggest threat to quick passage of new gun-control laws in the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., shooting that has prompted even pro-gun NRA-member lawmakers like Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to endorse a new look at how access to the most powerful weapons can be limited.


Coburn's office did not respond to multiple requests to discuss the current push for gun legislation. But given his record, it's hard to imagine Coburn agreeing to a major, new proposal without some fuss.


The last time Congress considered a major gun law -- one with broad support -- Coburn held it up, proving that the details of gun control are sticky when a conservative senator raises unpopular objections, especially a senator who's joked that it's too bad he can't carry a gun on the Senate floor.


After the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, Congress heard similar pleadings for new gun limits, some of them similarly to those being heard now. When it came to light that Seung-Hui Cho, the mentally disturbed 23-year-old who opened fire on campus, passed a background check despite mental-health records indicating he was a suicide threat, a push began to include such records in determining whether a person should be able to buy a gun.




Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., a longtime gun-control advocate whose husband was killed in a mass shooting on the Long Island Rail Road in 1996, introduced a widely supported bill to do just that. The NRA backed her National Instant Check System Improvement Amendments Act of 2007.


But Coburn didn't. The senator blocked action on the bill, citing concerns over patient privacy, limited gun access for veterans, and the cost of updating the background-check system,


In blocking that bill, Coburn pointed to a government study noting that 140,000 veterans had been referred to the background-check registry since 1998 without their knowledge.


"I am certainly understanding of the fact that some veterans could be debilitated to the point that such cataloguing is necessary, but we should ensure this process does not entangle the vast majority of our combat veterans who simply seek to readjust to normal life at the conclusion of their tours. I am troubled by the prospect of veterans refusing necessary treatment and the benefits they are entitled to. As I'm sure you would agree we cannot allow any stigma to be associated with mental healthcare or treatment of Traumatic Brain Injury," Coburn wrote to acting Veterans Secretary Gordon Mansfield.


Coburn succeeded in changing the legislation, negotiating a set of tweaks that shaved $100 million over five years, made it easier for prohibited gun owners to restore their gun rights by petitioning the government, and notifying veterans that if they abdicated control of their finances they would be added to the gun database. The bill passed and President Bush signed it in January 2008.






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New Scientist 2012 holiday quiz

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THIS was the year we held our breath in almost unbearable anticipation while we waited to see whether physicists at the Large Hadron Collider would finally get a clear view of the Higgs boson, so tantalisingly hinted at last December. Going a bit blue, we held on through March when one of the LHC's detectors seemed to lose sight of the thing, before exhaling in a puff of almost-resolution in July, when researchers announced that the data added up to a fairly confident pretty-much-actual-discovery of the particle.












Early indications were that it might be a weird and wonderful variety of the Higgs, prompting a collective gasp of excitement. That was followed by a synchronised sigh of mild disappointment when later data implied that it was probably the most boring possible version after all, and not a strange entity pointing the way to new dimensions and the true nature of dark matter. Prepare yourself for another puff or two as the big story moves on next year.













This respirational rollercoaster might be running a bit too slowly to supply enough oxygen to the brain of a New Scientist reader, so we have taken care to provide more frequent oohs and aahs using less momentous revelations. See how many of the following unfundamental discoveries you can distinguish from the truth-free mimics that crowd parasitically around them.












1. Which of these anatomical incongruities of the animal kingdom did we describe on 14 July?












  • a) A fish, found in a canal in Vietnam, that wears its genitals under its mouth
  • b) A frog, found in a puddle in Peru, that has no spleen
  • c) A lizard, found in a cave in Indonesia, that has four left feet
  • d) A cat, found in a tree in northern England, that has eight extra teeth

2. "A sprout by any other name would taste as foul." So wrote William Shakespeare in his diary on 25 December 1598, setting off the centuries of slightly unjust ridicule experienced by this routinely over-cooked vegetable. But which forbiddingly named veg did we report on 7 July as having more health-giving power than the sprout, its active ingredient being trialled as a treatment for prostate cancer?












  • a) Poison celery
  • b) Murder beans
  • c) Inconvenience potatoes
  • d) Death carrots

3. Scientists often like to say they are opening a new window on things. Usually that is a metaphor, but on 10 November we reported on a more literal innovation in the fenestral realm. It was:












  • a) A perspex peephole set in the nest of the fearsome Japanese giant hornet, to reveal its domestic habits
  • b) A glass porthole implanted in the abdomen of a mouse, to reveal the process of tumour metastasis
  • c) A crystal portal in the inner vessel of an experimental thorium reactor, to reveal its nuclear fires to the naked eye
  • d) A small window high on the wall of a basement office in the Princeton physics department, to reveal a small patch of sky to postgraduate students who have not been outside for seven years

4. On 10 March we described a new material for violin strings, said to produce a brilliant and complex sound richer than that of catgut. What makes up these super strings?












  • a) Mousegut
  • b) Spider silk
  • c) Braided carbon nanotubes
  • d) An alloy of yttrium and ytterbium

5. While the peril of climate change looms inexorably larger, in this festive-for-some season we might take a minute to look on the bright side. On 17 March we reported on one benefit of global warming, which might make life better for some people for a while. It was:












  • a) Receding Arctic sea ice will make it easier to lay undersea cables to boost internet speeds
  • b) Increasing temperatures mean that Greenlanders can soon start making their own wine
  • c) Rising sea levels could allow a string of new beach resorts to open in the impoverished country of Chad
  • d) More acidic seawater will add a pleasant tang to the salt water taffy sweets made in Atlantic City

6. In Alaska's Glacier Bay national park, the brown bear in the photo (above, right) is doing something never before witnessed among bearkind, as we revealed on 10 March. Is it:












  • a) Making a phonecall?
  • b) Gnawing at a piece of whalebone to dislodge a rotten tooth?
  • c) Scratching itself with a barnacle-covered stone tool?
  • d) Cracking oysters on its jaw?

7. Men have much in common with fruit flies, as we revealed on 24 March. When the sexual advances of a male fruit fly are rejected, he may respond by:












  • a) Whining
  • b) Hitting the booze
  • c) Jumping off a tall building
  • d) Hovering around the choosy female long after all hope is lost

8. While great Higgsian things were happening at the LHC, scientists puzzled over a newly urgent question: what should we call the boson? Peter Higgs wasn't the only physicist to predict its existence, and some have suggested that the particle's name should also include those other theorists or perhaps reflect some other aspect of the particle. Which of the following is a real suggestion that we reported on 24 March?

























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